Authored by James Marriott of Platform drawing on the collective experience of so many others in Platform and the multiple organisations we’ve collaborated with. Prompted by an invitation from the Climate Cultures Festival in Berlin to speak about Crude Britannia and The Oil Road, co-authored with Mika Minio-Paluello, I returned to the Baku-Tiblisi-Ceyhan Oil Pipeline…
On 18th April Ilham Aliyev will be inaugurated for the fourth time as President of Azerbaijan. His re-election comes as no surprise. It is so predictable that it barely counted as ‘news’ and consequently got next to no coverage in the international media. Originally the election was scheduled for 17th October, but at nine weeks…
Our ally Mahienour El-Massry is facing 2 years in jail in Egypt for speaking out against human rights abuses. This Sunday 31 May, a court will rule on her case. She faces a two year sentence on trumped up charges, for a small lawyers protest at Raml police station after cops assaulted another lawyer. The…
ميكا مينيو بالويللو في خضم الحركات الثورية في السنوات الأخيرة، ليس من السهل ألا نلاحظ أن تغير المناخ قد بدأ يغير الشرق الأوسط وشمال أفريقيا ،حيث نعيش، تغييراً جذرياً. هذا التحول التدريجي، الذي يصعب تجنبه، يهدد بنزوح الملايين من البشر، إن لم يكن عشرات الملايين، و بتغيير شكل المنطقة بشكل قد يصعب التعرف عليها. و…
One of the most famous critics of the Aliyev regime has been imprisoned in Baku. Khadija Ismayilova, an award winning investigative journalist was arrested for ‘inciting suicide’. If found guilty she faces up to seven years in prison. Ismayilova has spent years uncovering corruption in Azerbaijan, which she has traced all the way up to…
We’ve written a manifesto titled Energy beyond Neoliberalism: “This is a call for energy democracy. Not energy security or energy separation. A survivable and just energy future means breaking the grip of elite interests on our energy systems, ending dependency, increasing autonomy, building diverse power structures through which we can hold one another to account,…
Back in Spring, the Kilburn Manifesto team asked whether we’d like to submit a chapter on energy to their project. Edited by Soundings founding editors Stuart Hall, Doreen Massey, and Mike Rustin, After Neoliberalism seeks to open up space to debate alternatives to current dominant neoliberal systems. Most of our campaigning on oil focuses on…
Jamie Doward, Observer
Democracy activist and Platform ally, Rasul Jafarov, was arrested and detained in Baku over the weekend. Rasul has been charged with tax evasion, illegal entrepreneurship and power abuse. These are the same falsified charges that saw independent Azeri election monitor Anar Mammadli jailed for 5.5 years. Rasul’s arrest comes shortly after the prominent human rights…
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has promised up to €700 million for the disastrous Euro-Caspian Mega Pipeline. In a statement the Managing Director for Energy at the public bank said “the EBRD will invest €600-700 million in the Trans Adriatic Pipeline.” The Euro-Caspian Mega Pipeline (ECMP) is a huge piece of infrastructure…